Everyone is a number in this dystopian near-future where cameras track your every move. Score above 90 and your set for life. Score below 75 and you’re on your own, kid.
The Cycler Series
The Cyler Series: What would you do if you woke up one day as a member of the opposite sex? For Jill McTeague, this is no hypothetical question. It’s real life!
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So, I’m reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, right now and it’s mostly written in Spanglish, which Wikipedia tells me is not a pidgin language. Fine. It’s not pidgin. I still love it. I love the constant code-switching between English and Spanish because, heck sometimes English works but sometimes you need to say pendejo. Here’s a great sentence from the book: “Hey, Dionisio, isn’t that the girl que dio una pela last week?” This book won a Pulitzer and it’s easy to see why. It’s a heck of a read, with wonderfully dynamic, fully-human characters, set in that Pulitizer-friendly context of third world history. I’m learning about the history of Trujillo and the Dominican Republic and it doesn’t even hurt. Full of win, the whole thing really. But… Should he have translated the oodles of Spanish into English for his English readers? I have no trouble with it because I speak Spanish, but a good friend of mine, an avid reader who I know would have loved this book, actually put it down because she couldn’t understand large portions of it. It just irritated her. Clearly, Senor Diaz is under no obligacion to make things mas facil por sus readers Americanos y Igleses. Pero… Should he have? Like with a glossary of Spanish terms in the back? Just curious. 7 Responses to “Spanglish”Leave a Reply |
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I can usually understand what is said in Spanish but not speak with any fluency. Oddly enough I would not have said I could not read Spanish and yet I had no trouble reading the sentences with Spanish words. It’s hard for me to say whether I might read a book where I would need a dictionary to translate the other half. If the book was interesting, sure. But if I’m not interested in the story, even being fully in English wouldn’t help.
As for translating this book’s Spanish to English, I think it would be wrong to say he has to translate it for non-Spanish speaking readers. I’m not saying he shouldn’t, it would open up the number of people who could read the book but I don’t think he should have to.
I read a few one star reviews on Amazon and most commented on there being to much Spanish. Which might make you think if it was translated then more people would like it. However most of those same reviews commented on there be too many pop culture references. If it wasn’t one it’d be the other. So maybe he should take out the pop culture references too?
No, I don’t think so. The main character of the book is a science fiction, comics, fantasy, roleplaying geek/nerd. To remove the references would make the character more like everyone else. In a similar way translating the Spanish would dilute the ethnicity of the characters and the setting. Do we really want characters that have no unique feature so all speaking grammatically perfect English?
Um, well that’s my two cents for what it’s worth.
Thanks, Gillian. My instincts lead me to the same conclusion. But then, I had no trouble with the Spanish words. For the record, I don’t think an author is under any obligation to do anything that makes it easier for the reader. I’m just curious if there is a way to open this up to more people. I don’t think footnotes would work because he already uses them so well for his lengthy digressions into Dominican history. That’s why I suggested the possibility of a glossary. I bet he could have fun with that if he so chose.
I remember enough high school Spanish that I was able to get by all right, but I think you can understand most of it from context and it made the characters seem more real and the dialogue richer, somehow.
I wonder if people who primarily read literary books were more annoyed by all the geeky references. Part of my love for the book is the idea that some people might have to Google “Phantom Zone,” “Galactus,” “Watcher” and similar sf and comic references…
That’s a good point, Eugene. I didn’t get a lot of the geeky references, but it didn’t bother me in the least. Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t get all of the Spanish either (I’m a bit rusty). I guess it doesn’t really bother me if there’s some ambiguity in a book. It keeps things interesting.
no, he shouldn’t have. i can’t speak spanish, but frankly, i didn’t even notice the spanglish. i’m constantly surprised at how much people mention it.
on the other hand, i couldn’t understand what “villette” was about because i missed so much of the french dialogue. i think that’s the difference: if the foreign language parts are couched in english sentences and you have a fighting chance of figuring out what they mean from context, then great. if you’re just putting whole passages in a foreign language because you expect your reader to be fluent in it, then don’t.
These “too much Spanish” complainers would never make it through “Foucault’s Pendulum”. Heck, it took me a very long time, and I still don’t know what some of those epigrams at the top of Eco’s chapters mean. Then again, he’s on record as saying that he deliberately constructed an audience by making “The Name of the Rose” hard to follow.
I’m gonna have to attempt this one too. Yo soy de Miami pero that only goes so far. Hell, I even know native speakers from Cuba who get made fun of by Spaniards for saying parquear, because Everyone Knows The Correct Word Is estacionar. So at some point, it’s not just whether you know Spanish, it’s whether you know the RIGHT Spanish.
That’s nothing new, of course. I’ll say “Yeah, we might could stop there on the way, it depends on traffic”, and people from elsewhere will look at me funny as soon as I say “might could”. Yet these same people will try to convince me that there’s a beverage called “pop”.
When I was a kid we called carbonated beverages “tonic.” I’m told this is a Massachusetts regionalism. I’ve never gotten used to “pop” myself.